


The Ghost of the Great Hotel

by thesleepingsatellite



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:38:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/pseuds/thesleepingsatellite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a monster clawed it's way into her brain, Josie fled the confines of her body and became the ghost of the Great Northern.  She's been watching ever since.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of the Great Hotel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Ganesh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/gifts).



“Put it down, Josie. Put it down!” 

“Harry?” Never before has she heard his voice filled with such anger, and that he is directing his anger at her is almost too much to bear.

“Put it down!” he yells, his face contorted, the gun shaking in his hands.

“Harry, forgive me,” she pleads. “I never meant to hurt you-“

Then, just as Harry looks as though he is willing to listen, to save her, the words are stolen from her by a menace that has slithered into the back of her skull. Her skin crawls as it coils around her brain stem, as if trying to take up residence there. She recoils in horror at the dank and slimy presence, but it sinks a dark talon of a claw into her consciousness, digging deeper. 

She thinks she knows what it is, remembers Laura telling her about the evil that lurks in the woods. She begins to panic as it creeps closer to the seat of her consciousness, puncturing her psyche as it claws deeper into her brain.

 _No!_ she thinks, and she locks eyes with Harry as she forces her body to inhale sharply, the air burning as it enters her lungs. _Not me!_

Her heart pounds painfully in her chest and there is a rushing noise in her ears. The thing at the base of her brain is twisting and howling, emitting a noise that vacillates between laughter and hideous screams. She closes her eyes and wishes desperately to flee, not from the room, but from the confines of her brain, which is no longer hers alone.

Blinding white pain consumes her. She feels her psyche rip in two, and then she’s free – at least the part of her that the menace isn't latched on to – soaring out of her body only to land a short distance away, still tethered to her body and the part of her soul that the monster has claimed for its own.

She’s only vaguely aware of her body collapsing behind her, of the flurry of activity that follows. She is overwhelmed by the feeling of being trapped in something that feels like molasses. It is thick and heavy around her and she can’t breathe, and then she panics, because why would she need to breathe now? She’s a dead person, a ghost, and ghosts don’t breathe.

Ghosts don’t breathe, but she discovers that they can scream.

\---

When Cooper drags Harry, sobbing and shaking, away from her body, she follows. 

It’s like swimming in a river. She has to push herself through the wood grain, and she finds that it’s far easier to swim with the grain rather than across it. She moves down through the night table toward the wooden floor, and then into the walls. She follows Harry through the hallway and down the stairs, watching as Cooper’s supportive arm tightens around him. They move into the Great Room, and Cooper pats Harry’s arm as he delivers Harry into Hawk’s care. Hawk takes Harry by the arm with a sympathetic smile and leads him out of the hotel. 

“Come back!” She cries out as she follows them through the wood beams as far as she possibly can to the edge of a veranda that borders the parking lot. “I’m still here, Harry. Harry, please-“

She watches as Hawk opens the police cruiser door and maneuvers Harry inside. Harry continues to stare blankly forward. Josie prays for him to look toward her, for him to see her face staring out at him from the wood, but he doesn’t. The taillights of the car come on, then it backs out and turns onto the road, taking Harry away from her, perhaps forever.

She flees to the bottom-most part of the hotel and curls up in a dark knot in the wood where she stays for weeks. 

\---

She becomes the ghost of the great hotel.

She is lonely, trapped in the wood of the Great Northern. She’s not ever alone, not really. She is surrounded by people all the time. They exist in her rooms when she is the walls, the walk over her when she is the floor, they rest on her when she resides in a bed frame, hoping for a modicum of rest.

One of the great ironies of being a ghost, she finds, is that she cannot sleep. 

At night, she can hear the creatures that live in the wood, scratching and sliding against the wood grain. Tiny insects, whose jaws work tirelessly at the supporting beams, chew the wood fibers as they create tunnels within it. She follows a tunnel one day, finding herself in the nest of a beast, a great monstrous ant presiding over a vast nest within a cavern in the foundation. She watches and laughs in amazement as one of its offspring bursts out of an egg and then startles when the giant ant inclines it’s head toward her as if it knows she’s there. For a moment she is elated - one living creature, at least, can sense her presence. The elation quickly turns to panic when a horde of worker ants flood toward her, and she flees from the nest, tearing through the beams before the tiny jaws can dig into the small volume of wood currently housing her soul.

It’s the only part of herself that she has left. Her body was taken away, has probably been burned or buried by now. And truly, she only is in possession of a fraction of her soul. The menace had kept part of it in his grasp when she died. She doesn’t know where it was taken, only that it is cold. Sometimes she thinks she can hear things from this Other Place. She thinks she can hear snippets of conversation in garbled language that sounds like a record played backwards, smooth jazz music, and horrible screams. 

She fears that she will sink fully into that Other Place if she releases her hold on the present, so she forces herself to observe, to remain aware of the world and the goings on within her walls. 

She watches.

She overhears countless conversations between Cooper and a lady known only as “Diane”, learning of his pursuit of the madman Windom Earl and of his new, pure love for a woman named Annie. She is the lone observer of Ben Horne’s secret meetings and hears talk of his illicit affair and an illegitimate child. She witnesses the blossoming love affair between Ben’s daughter and his handsome business partner, and her heart aches. She comes to understand what she has lost and realizes that she would trade another fraction of her soul to spend more time with Harry in the Real World, even it were just for a minute.

She lingers in the Great Room, because there are almost always people there. She can feel a shadow of what life was like when their vibrancy is reflected towards her, and she remembers breathing, having a body with hands and feet, the way it felt when that body was held in another’s arms. She looks into strangers’ eyes as they gaze at the paintings and animals mounted upon her walls, and on rare occasions she thinks the sees eyes usually widening in surprise as they notice her watching them. These moments pass within a split second and the strangers’ eyes drift past her, their logical minds unable and unwilling to process the sight of an apparition in the wooden walls. 

Very young children can see her. They are perplexed when they first lay eyes on her, a disembodied face that seems to exist just underneath the surface of the wall. When she smiles they laugh, and it becomes a favorite game of hers to cavort with the small children in the hallways until their parents pull them away.

On rare occasions others see her. She discovers that she enjoyed spending time spying on Ben, learning his secrets, and she’s sure that he’s caught a glimpse of her more than once. 

One time, the person who sees her is Pete, her dear, sweet darling Pete, who locks eyes with when she’s watching him from within the walls of the Great Room. Within seconds of sighting her, his delighted face fills her view, his eyebrows raised and his mouth open in surprise.

“Josie,” he says, and her heart soars. “I see your face!” 

“I’m here, Pete!” She says, but then he is gone, dragged away by the Horne girl in her pursuit of her one true love. Pete looks back and waves at as he’s pulled from the room, and she hopes that he will turn back. 

He doesn’t, and she despairs. The grip of a girl in the throes of first love is relentless, she knows this, and while he doesn’t return that day, hope blooms within her when he returns a week later. 

She finds him in a quiet lounge, intently surveying the walls and she knows that he is searching for her. She swims through the wood beams toward him, and allows her face to manifest in front of him.

He jumps backward, the hair visibly raising on his body, before he raises one hand to his chest. He moves forward, bracing himself against the wall as he says, “Josie, I’ve been looking for you for an hour.”

“Pete!” She says, “I’ve been right here! I’m here all-”

“I can’t hear you, Josie”, he says, locking her eyes with his. Then she opens her mouth and yells his name as loud as he can, but he can hear nothing.

“What are you doing in there?” he asks, though by now she knows he does not expect a response. “You’ve been dead for months, and you’ve been here the whole time? Harry’s been a wreck and Catherine has been on a warpath about some box she wants open that Eckhardt left her, and Cooper has been making me play chess. Chess! Though that part isn’t so bad, I haven’t had anybody good to play against in a long time” He pauses and looks at her. 

She begs with her eyes for him to help her. 

“You remember I taught you to play?” 

She nods.

“I miss that.”

She nods again and mouths, “Me too.”

He leans his head against the wall, exhaling heavily. “And now you’re the ghost of the Great Northern.” He shakes his head sadly, stroking his hand against he wall. “I guess we won’t be playing any games again any time soon.”

He lifts his head and looks at her. 

“Help me,” she mouths.

“I’ll try,” he says, smiling sadly before he walks away.

\---

She watches and she waits. Pete said he would help, and he’s never lied to her, not even once, even though she spent half of their friendship lying to him about who she was, her past, and the crimes that she had committed.

She waits and watches until one day Harry, her Harry, returns. Only he’s not alone, and he hasn’t come to save her. He and that nitwit Andy are leading Agent Cooper into the hotel, and though he appears to be physically fit, Cooper’s face holds the blank and empty expression of a person in deep shock. She swims through the wood, following them, watching as they guide him to his room.

Once inside, they release him, and he simply stands there, unresponsive and seemingly not aware of his surroundings. Josie moves so she can look into his eyes and she recoils in horror because his gaze isn’t entirely empty as she’d thought. There’s something in there with him.

“Coop,” Harry starts, putting a hand on his arm, looking at Cooper with the same care and concern that he showed Josie, so long ago. “Maybe you want to put on some pajamas.”

“Right,” Cooper responds, his voice flat. “Pajamas.”

Cooper does not move, and Josie watches, perplexed, as Harry sighs and retrieves Cooper’s pajamas from the dresser. 

“I guess we got to do it for him,” Harry says when Cooper doesn’t move to take the pajamas from him. Harry and Andy work quickly to divest Cooper of his clothes, and piece by piece, the armour of Cooper’s black and white suit is dismantled and laid aside. When the vibrant blue pajamas have taken its place Harry gently leads Cooper to the bed to sit him down. Cooper remains upright and Harry lays him down, pushing gently upon his shoulders before lifting his legs to lie on the bed. 

Then he turns off the light, and takes Andy by the arm.

“Do you think we should just leave him like this?” Andy utters.

“We’re not,” Harry says gruffly, tugging Andy from the room. “Come on.” 

She follows them to the hallway, and watches as Harry picks up the courtesy telephone to place a call to Doctor Hayward. Throughout the conversation, the furrow in Harry’s brow deepens, and the hand that is not holding the telephone tightens into a fist. She yearns to reach out and hold him, to take him in her arms and tell him that everything will be alright, but she can’t. And even if she could she doesn’t think that anything at all will be alright for Harry, ever again.

She waits with Harry and Andy until the doctor comes, and allows herself to remain an unseen presence behind Harry’s left shoulder as he sits on the sofa in the hallway. She projects reassurance and love toward Harry and gradually his shoulders loosen until he is leaning back into the sofa, his head lolling as he dozes. 

She follows them into Cooper’s room when Doctor Hayward arrives, and watches as Cooper’s pulse, blood pressure and temperature are taken. The doctor releases Cooper’s eyelid and turns off the light he was using to examine the eyes before he turns to Harry. 

“Nothing physically wrong with him, as far as I can tell,” Doctor Hayward says. “It’s not a stroke, or any kind of metabolic disorder. It’s probably catatonia induced by intense psychological stress, a kind of post-traumatic response.” He pats Harry on the shoulder. “Let’s wait until the morning and see if he’s more responsive by then. If not, we’ll talk about moving him to the hospital.” He smiles kindly. “Why don’t you get some sleep. You’ll be more help to him if you’re rested.”

“Right,” Harry nods, and drags his hand against his forehead as he suppresses a yawn. “I guess I won’t be doing any good just hanging around here doing nothing. I’ll just check in for the night. Thanks, doc.”

“Call me in the morning, son,” the doctor says as Harry leaves the room.

“Sure thing,” he calls.

She spends the rest of the night in Harry’s hotel room, nestled in a wood knot in the headboard by his left temple. He tosses and turns for the first hour, unable to make himself settle comfortably into sleep. When it is clear that sleep won’t come on its own for him, she tries to send peaceful and warm thoughts toward him. Before long, his breathing evens out into the slow sounds of deep sleep. The moonlight is bright enough that she is able to watch his chest rise and fall.

He snores. She had forgotten about that. When she was alive, his snoring had bothered her and she had spent the night with him on rare occasions only. Tonight she treasures the sound, grateful for the chance to spend time alone with him, even if he doesn’t realize that she’s with him.

When she was alive, there were times when she wasn’t sure if she truly loved him, or if what she felt was just a part of another game, another lie. It is only through death that she was able to understand the depth of her feelings toward him. She truly loved him. She loves him still, even though he is part of the world and she is not.

He is moving on, drifting away from her, and she thinks that perhaps that is right.

When the morning comes, the sunlight streaming in through the window picks out the highlights in his curls. She longs for this night together to last, but before long he hitches a great breath as he stirs, waking up. 

He dresses, rakes a hand through his hair, and lifts the telephone receiver to call the doctor back to the hotel.

\-- 

“I need to brush my teeth.” Cooper says.

“Sure,” Harry says, his voice laced with cautious concern as he and the doctor help Cooper out of bed. 

They release Cooper once he is standing and he walks over to the bathroom doorway, and when Cooper holds his hand against the door frame, darkness floods Josie’s soul.

“I need to brush my teeth,” Cooper repeats, before entering the bathroom, his voice dull. Josie knows that something is very wrong. With a quick glance back at Harry, Josie follows Cooper into the other room and watches as he picks up the toothpaste only to squeeze it into the sink. She swims through the wood to the wall holding the mirror, to better see what he is doing, only to feel a solid impact against the wall that is accompanied by a thudding sound and the noise of the mirror shattering.

 _He knows I’m here_ , Josie thinks, and she begins to panic.

The shouts from outside the room start, but that is nothing compared to the horror within as Cooper laughs hysterically, blood flowing from the gash on his forehead where he connected with the mirror. 

She runs, runs to the other side of the room, toward the door. She wants to alert Harry, and she knows that she can’t because she’s not even real anymore, but there has to be something she can do. She spares one last glance back at Cooper, who is cackling “Where’s Annie?” over and over again, and she sees reflected in the mirror not Cooper’s face, but _his_ face, the face that belongs to that malevolent horror that crept into the back of her skull the night that she died. 

It locks eyes with her in the mirror and unleashes an inhuman growl. 

She flees.

Blindly, she darts through the wood grain, trying to get as far away from the monster wearing Cooper’s face as possible. She runs for what feels like an eternity, until she finds herself in a room that, impossibly, she has never seen before. 

The surprise that she feels over seeing this new place with it’s red curtained walls and it’s black and white floors is replaced with a shock when she realizes that she has a body. She feels like Humpty Dumpty, put back together again. She feels like her fractured soul has been healed. She’s real and she’s in this room, not simply observing from the perimeter.

She’s not alone.

There is a Giant with her, immensely tall, with white skin, white clothes and a red bow tie that matches the curtains that shroud the room. He is bathed in light, and as she stands before him she is filled with serenity and calm.

“You’ve seen what happens.” He says.

“Yes,” she says, startled at the sound of her own voice, raw from disuse. “I- It almost happened to me-” 

“You can help.” 

“I can? How? Can I help Cooper? Can I help Harry?”

He nods solemnly. “Do you agree?”

“I agree!” She says, her whole body shaking with fear and glee and dread. “I can help, I want to help.”

“You won’t be as you were,” the giant continues. “You’ll take another form-”

“Anything,” Josie begs. “Just let me help-”

“As you wish,” the Giant says, folding his hands together. 

The world goes dark.

\-- 

She is a sapling, struggling to reach the sun’s warmth in the dense, dark forest. 

\--

She is a tree, with long limbs and bright green leaves. Her strong branches playing host to small creatures. Sometimes children climb in her, and she loves that best of all. When they fall, she catches them. She’d hate to see a human come to harm. She feels a strange kinship with them, these little agents of chaos who travel across the Earth’s surface instead of fixed in one spot as she is, as she always has been, as she will be forever more.

\--

When the axe bites into her, she discovers that trees know pain. She falls, and she feels them chip away at her bit by bit. She allows her consciousness to flee the blade, which chops away at her, forcing her into a smaller and smaller space until she is confined to one small, knotted branch.

Soon, the only body remaining to her is a log.

She is placed on a truck with other logs that used to be make up her trunk and her majestic crown. They feel empty and sterile to her now. They’re not alive, but she is, she knows that she is because she can think and she can feel but she doesn’t understand what is going on, or where this truck is taking her.

Rough hands bundle her and other logs into a stack. 

She is sold in a store and taken home by a man who calls his wife Margaret. Margaret wears glasses and reads by the woodstove. She puts the logs in the fire one by one over a series of days. The log comes to fear the flames, because she knows that death awaits her there. Before she is ready, Margaret's hands are holding her, ready to put her into the woodstove. She braces herself for the fire, but instead, she finds Margaret looking down at her, her eyebrows drawn together.

She looks up at Margaret, pleading, and Margaret gasps. 

“You’re alive,” Margaret whispers.

“I am”, the log cries. “Please, please. Don’t burn me.”

“I won’t,” Margaret says, and the log gasps because Margaret can hear her. It has been so long since anyone could hear her at all. “Shhhh,” Margaret gently soothes her, cradling the log as she sits in her rocking chair. “It’s going to be okay.”

The log feels safe in Margaret’s arms. 

Soon, Margaret becomes her best friend, her only friend. The people that the log meets when she is out with Margaret think that Margaret is insane, and she longs to defend her, but she cannot for only one person can hear her voice. 

The log holds many secrets. Tales of betrayal, love, sex and death, events that she couldn’t possibly know anything about because she is just a log and before that she was a tree, and she wasn’t anything before that, was she? 

“One day, my log will have something to say about this,” Margaret tells a tall man in a black suit, and the log knows it is almost the time for her secrets to be revealed. The log wants desperately to help. And she will, if only to help the other man, the one who stands as tall as a maple tree, the man curly hair the same rich colour of a cherry tree’s bark. 

That man is everything to her, and she doesn’t know why. 

She has faith that she will come to understand, one day. Until then, she waits.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explore Josie's existence after her death. Her fate is one of the plot points that has haunted me since I first watched this series, over 20 years ago, and this was a treat to write. <3


End file.
